Director, Risk and Compliance Advisory | Great West

The Canada Life Assurance Company•Toronto, ON

4d•CA$128,200 - CA$178,200•Hybrid

About The Position

Great-West Lifeco is seeking a Director, Risk and Compliance Advisory to provide oversight, guidance, and advisory support for Great-West Lifeco corporate functions. The role helps initiative leads and operations teams identify, assess, and manage risk and navigate enterprise requirements to support informed decision making. Acting as a trusted advisor and constructive and independent challenger, the role promotes practical, consistent, and business-focused risk management while enabling initiatives to move forward with the right risk mitigations and governance support to achieve their objectives. The role facilitates and advises but does not replace accountability of initiative leaders nor accountabilities of specialist second-line functions. It is the primary second-line risk advisor and coordinator for enterprise corporate-function initiatives, responsible for ensuring the right risk expertise is engaged at the right time and that projects receive consistent, practical, and business-focused risk challenge and guidance.

Requirements

Demonstrated experience in risk management, compliance, operational risk, project governance or business advisory roles, ideally in a financial service or a regulated environment.
Strong generalist risk advisory capability, with the judgement to identify when specialist input is required and the ability to coordinate across subject matter experts.
Practical understanding of corporate functions, enterprise projects and the three lines of defence model.
Ability to translate complex risk and compliance expectations into clear, actionable guidance for project teams and senior stakeholders.
Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships with initiative leads, Risk and Compliance teams and cross-functional partners.
Sound analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess project context, identify risk considerations and recommend a risk-based approach.
Experience supporting governance forums, risk reviews, issue management, control assessments or project readiness activities is considered an asset.
Relevant professional qualifications in risk management, compliance, audit, finance, project management or related disciplines.
Curiosity and innovation mindset, with a strong interest in emerging technologies, AI and automation, and the ability to thoughtfully assess both opportunities and risks to the business.

Responsibilities

Provide advisory, coordination, challenge, oversight, governance and continuous improvement support for corporate function initiatives, helping teams manage risk effectively while delivering business outcomes.
Provide risk advisory support to corporate function initiative leads and teams, helping teams understand key risks, expected controls, governance considerations and practical next steps.
Act as a coordinating point between corporate function projects and Risk and Compliance subject matter experts, helping connect the right expertise at the right time.
Support effective second-line oversight by reviewing project artifacts, risk assessments and decision points, and by providing advice, guidance and independent challenge.
Facilitate collaboration across business segments and second-line functions to promote a coordinated, efficient and consistent approach to risk management.
Help initiative leads apply enterprise risk, compliance, privacy, operational resilience, third-party, data and other relevant frameworks proportionate to the project and business objective.
Promote consistent approaches to risk identification, assessment, mitigation and escalation across corporate function initiatives, while recognising that each project may have different context and complexity.
Advise on risk governance, issue management, residual risk, acceptance decisions and readiness for key project milestones or governance forums.
Identify themes, common questions and recurring support needs across initiatives.
Partner with Risk and Compliance teams to continuously improve guidance, tools, processes and ways of working.
Support a strong risk-aware culture by providing clear, pragmatic and business-enabling advice that helps projects move forward confidently and effectively.